ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 452

· June 22, 1887

Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 452
This issue of the pulp magazine features "The Spot Saint's Mission" by J. C. Cowdrick, serialized fiction set in Silver Nugget, Colorado, 1880. The protagonist is Hannibal Long, a ragged, elderly preacher called the "Spot Saint from Scarecrow," who enters the Green Bottle Saloon exhorting patrons to repent. When the bully Dan Gilbert confronts him, Long produces a revolver from his tattered coat and forces Gilbert to back down. After shaking hands peacefully, Long reveals his mission is reforming the world and dethroning Evil. A strikingly handsome young man then enters—described as twenty-five years old, dark-complexioned with a distinctive small, colorful necktie contrasting his dark corduroy suit. The story combines Western frontier setting with moral melodrama.

Public domain (pre-1929), restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain